WEST CITY FILMS

JEANNE JORDAN is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker who has been making documentaries and dramas for over twenty years. TheIndependent said of her resume, “it reads like PBS’s greatest hits.”

Troublesome Creek: a Midwestern (co-directed with Steven Ascher) won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at Sundance, was nominated for an Academy Award and received many other awards. It was released theatrically and broadcast on PBS The American Experience, the BBC premier documentary strand Storyville, ZDF Germany and many others.

Jordan and Ascher’s feature documentary, So Much So Fast premiered at Sundance, was released theatrically to critical acclaim, and has been broadcast on PBS FRONTLINE, BBC Storyville, ZDF Germany, and many other networks around the world.

Raising Renee premiered at Full Frame and was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Arts and Culture Programming. It won the Audience Award at Independent Film Festival Boston and Best Documentary at the Syracuse Film Festival. It was broadcast on HBO, Knowledge Canada, SVT Sweden and AVRO Netherlands.

She produced and edited the short drama Seduction Theory which was selected for the Toronto International Shorts Festival , the Los Angeles International Shorts Festival, won a Platinum Remi for best dark comedy at Worldfest Houston and screened at the Cannes Film Festival Short Film Corner.

Jordan was Series Producer of the PBS children’s series Postcards from Busterfor two seasons, producing a new, international version of the show, nominated for the Outstanding Children’s Series Emmy both years.

Among her awards are the Prix Italia, a Peabody award and an International Documentary Association Distinguished Achievement Award. She was nominated for a Directors Guild of America Award and an Independent Spirit Award. She received the Michael DeBakey Journalism Award and an Insight Award from the National Association of Film and Digital Media Artists.

Jordan edited two films of the groundbreaking civil rights series Eyes on the Prizewhich was nominated for an Oscar and won the DuPont Columbia Award, and films for American Experience, including season opener, Amelia Earhart and The Wright Stuff. Other editing includes My Mother’s Murder for HBO and the Emmy-nominee, A Normal Face for NOVA.

Her dramatic feature work includes several films for American Playhouse, including Noon Wine, Lemon Sky and the Emmy-winning series Concealed Enemies on the trials of Alger Hiss. She edited the bilingual feature, Blue Diner which won the prestigious ALMA award.

In 1988, Jordan and Orlando Bagwell produced Running With Jesse, a chronicle of Jesse Jackson’s presidential run for FRONTLINE, which Jordan also edited. She has produced and edited several pieces for The PBS Newshour and films for the PBS series Art Close Up, which won and were nomintated for Emmys.

Jordan graduated from the University of Iowa and began her career at Iowa Public Television. She has twice been honored with a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and she was a member of the Breadloaf writers conference. She has taught filmmaking at Harvard and the Art Institute of Boston. She has lectured and held master classes in several countries, including Tokyo University, the CPB/PBS Producers Academy, the Full Frame Fellows Program, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard Law School, and the Aristoteles Workshop in Romania sponsored by the European network Arte. She has been a guest critic at Yale University, Duke University and Rhode Island School of Design.

Jordan has advised and contributed to numerous film productions. She and Ascher are Executive Producers of the ITVS-supported film, Deej, winner of the Peabody Award.

She has received grants from the the LEF Foundation, the Artists Foundation, the Paul Robeson Fund, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Iowa Humanities and many other state humanities and arts councils. Her films have screened at major festivals internationally and are in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, Harvard Film Archive, UCLA and the Sundance Collection.

Writing on Jordan’s work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Variety, Ecran Total and books including Documentary Storytelling by Sheila Curren Bernard.